“Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and ‘explain’ all, ‘account’ for all, or believe nothing of it?  Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall,—­he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?—­Armer Teufel!  Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender?  Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die?  ‘Explain’ me all this, or do one of two things:  Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God’s world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sand-blind Pedant.”

CHAPTER XI.  PROSPECTIVE.

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain.  Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava?  Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do.  Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances.  For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole:—­

“Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist:  ’If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.’  Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least FORCE is not?  The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer.  How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless?  Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?